Tamagotchi Review

The original virtual pet phenom shows its age in this mobile edition.

Almost ten years ago, Bandai unleashed a Rubik's Cube-sized craze on the world: Tamagotchi. These plastic eggs housed simplistic, but then-engaging virtual pets that you raised from hatchling and played with until they reached death's door. (Or until you got bored and chucked the thing.) Tamagotchi has enjoyed something of a revival lately, thanks to updated toys and a few new vids, like Tamagotchi Connection for the Nintendo DS. And now Bandai has released a pixel-perfect duplicate of the original toy for mobile.

It may be too pixel perfect at this point, though. All of the activities are in place, from the little mini-games to the screen wipe when you cleaned your pet. You still feed the little fella when it's hungry and discipline it when it misbehaves. But none of the activities have any interaction beyond the click of a single button -- which is historically accurate, but doesn't necessarily equate into a compelling play. The only real level of interaction is somewhat hidden -- how you treat your blobby baby Tamagotchi affects the adult form, but the formula is not made available to players.

If anything Tamagotchi functions as pure nostalgia. It looks and sounds exactly like the original egg (one friend was able to recognize what I was playing strictly by the chirps without seeing the screen) in a classic mode, but you can update the graphics with a quick switch in the options screen. The new pets look a little nicer, sure, but they're still pretty rudimentary compared to other virtual pet games currently available, like My Dog and Neopets. (Both of which I recommend over Tamagotchi.)

Expectations change with time, and the original Tamagotchi has not aged well. I spent some quality time with my virtual pet over the course of several days, only to marvel at how entertainment evolves so rapidly. I was a proud Tamagotchi owner all those years ago, but I struggled to maintain interest beyond the curiosity of days one and two.

The Verdict

As a nostalgia trip (amazing how in this VH1 Classic of a world, just ten years now qualifies as nostalgia), Tamagotchi is a success -- it's an exact facsimile of the original plastic pet craze. But the genre has evolved and moved on, leaving the original Tamagotchi looking almost quaint, and playing rather blandly.